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The second—and final—day went really well down here in Delray Beach. The first session of the day was Ross Bourgeios, Assistant Chief of Public Safety, Mercedes-Benz Superdome/Smoothie King Center/Champion Square—all of the buildings on the Superdome campus. Bourgeios said he has "One of the coolest jobs in America." From Super Bowls to concerts, he has to figure out the security needs. "The security threat for Tool is different from the security threat for Barry Manilow."

"Cybersecurity threatens the physical security stronghold" brought attendees to look at the ways in which cybersecurity and physical security interact. Physical protection has a real impact on cybersecurity, Hikvision sales engineer Joe Coe pointed out. "If somebody gets access to [your equipment], they can install things locally that give them the ability to take that over."

Panelists Michael Campbell, president and CEO of MachineShop, Brian Lohse, director of sales, Secure-I, and moderator Steve Van Till, Brivo CEO, presented the final session of this year's conference: "Internet of things today and tomorrow." According to Lohse, the "real magic" happens when data gathered from multiple IoT sensors gets analyzed and interpreted into valuable information for the users.

Day 1

The first day started with a great keynote from Tony Cassell, global security director for Dropbox. He emphasized that trust is key when building out a company’s security. At Dropbox, he was told he could pick and choose the technology. To instill trust, he made the process transparent, detailing why certain technologies could be good for the company’s growth, or exactly why they needed to be changed out for better ones.

“Biometrics: Battle of the body parts” four distinct perspectives of biometric technology were presented: fingerprint, hand geometry, facial recognition, and iris scan, each represented by a manufacturer specializing in the technology. A panel of four SSN “20 under 40” winners, Class of 2015, crowned iris scan the winner. Though, an attendee poll indicated a favor toward facial recognition as the most prominent biometric in the future.

Matthew Slatoff, VP of global security and content protection, for Marvel Studios presented on what it takes to protect a big-budget movie. Sometimes this requires badging and CCTV—traditional security measures. But, when it comes to content protection, you might have to get more creative—like using large umbrellas or parking a big bus in the way to block paparazzi.

In “healthy and wise?” Ashley Ditta, from Brigham & Women's Faulkner Hospital and Christopher C. Moore, of Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Plymouth, Mass., talked about the specific challenges in securing a hospital. Ralph Nerette, director of security and emergency management for Dana Farber Cancer Institute, served as the moderator. Ashley brought up a tactic: following a specific technician regardless of company because they are the one who knows the building and its safety protocols.

Five of Security Systems News’ “20 under 40” winners, Class of 2015, talked about trends in the industry in “Next Gen integrators and end users face off.” A couple of the panelists said that relationships with manufacturers can help security companies and end users plan for the future by hearing about upcoming products.

The day wrapped up with the “20 under 40” reception. SSN was pleased to hand out awards to the 17 honorees who came to this year’s conference.

Monday, before the conference

I've made it down to Delray Beach, Fla., for this year's TechSec Solutions conference. To find out what's happening at the show, check back here for more information.

TechSec Solutions is coming up next week in Delray Beach, Fla., Feb. 2-3, and there will be topics of interest for monitoring stations.

One session that affects all companies in the industry looks at cybersecurity, and how it threatens the physical security world. Joe Coe, sales engineer with Hikvision; Rodney Thayer, a consultant with Smithee, Spelvin, Agnew and Splinge; and Chris Pechkam will take the stage to talk about new vulnerabilities that arise from more internet connectivity.

In the “Next Gen integrators and end users face off” panel, five of SSN’s “20 under 40”—three integrators and two end users—will approach the outlook for new technology in physical security. I’m sure Josh Long of Diebold Security will bring in a good monitoring perspective on the future of the industry.

I’ve heard more than a few central stations talking about monitoring connected devices. “Internet of Things, today and tomorrow” will take a look at how prevalent the IoT has become in recent years.

Find out more about the show by clicking here. Hope to see you down there next week.

Of course neither Kai Ryssdal nor Hillary Clinton were talking about how JCI and Tyco will merge branch offices or how the combined company will nurture relationships with security integrators, they were talking about the tax-driven nature of the deal.

In moving its headquarters, or at least its tax base, to Ireland, Johnson Controls will save $150 million in taxes it would normally have to pay the U.S. Government. Tyco is experienced with domiciling outside of the U.S. having lived in Bermuda and Switzerland previously.

Tyco CEO George Oliver and JCI CEO Alex Molinaroli said they expect an additional $500 million in "synergies" in the next three years. They expect $150 million in savings in corporate reductions--within the next two years, and within the next three years $350 million in savings as the result of business and operational improvement.

People I talked to about these projections believe JCI and Tyco are good companies that are capable of reaching that $350 million in savings, but they say it could take longer than three years.

Once the savings are realized, the new company's challenge will be growth. Both Tyco and JCI have had trouble growing in the past three years. Will the combined company present the security industry with a better integrator? Will the combined company, on the product side, be good at nurturing relationships with integrators?

During the Monday investors call, Oliver and Molinaroli spoke a lot about the opportunity the combined company has to "provide building products, services and technology that can serve customers' needs holistically." Molinaroli said the integration at the branch level will not be that complex. JCI is experienced with this kind of consolidation, having done the same when it acquired York, an HVAC company it acquired in 2005. Molinaroli said he was speaking "as someone who came from the branches."

Oliver pointed out complementary capabilities and geographies. One company has a big presence in Asia and the other in Europe, and both have a big presence in North America.

Oliver said the combined company gives "us a big leadership position in the new market being developed in smart buildings." He added "we see our industry transforming" and the "real opportunity is [with] the Internet of Things and the smart building."

I interviewed Oliver, Van Dover and Renae Leary, Tyco VP global accounts. During that visit, Oliver talked about the importance of connected systems and the information that can be derived from those systems. “Integration capability is fundamental to our success,” he said.

A little more from that interview:

Tyco’s enterprise-level security systems include intrusion, access control, video management, fire systems and integrated systems, but the new center will enable Tyco to tie more building systems into solutions for its global customers, he said.

One immediate opportunity is fire. According to Leary, an estimated 20 percent of Tyco’s current global enterprise customers use Tyco for fire as well as security. Tyco aims to get its existing global enterprise customers to all use Tyco for fire. She predicted that the number will increase incrementally as current customers upgrade existing fire systems and/or add new facilities, and as new customers come on board.

While many global customers are still working on integrating access and video, many are starting to want to integrate fire, identity management and PSIM. “Customers are starting to try some of these things,” Leary said. “It’s picking up steam [through] trials and pilot programs.”

The ultimate goal is to have all systems integrated on a single platform for these customers and to provide business intelligence, systems and solutions “to better manage data in real time and act on data immediately,” Leary said.

Leary said that the company’s “core commercial business is still a huge focus for us.” Oliver added that "the new Tyco" is designed to "serve [commercial] customers top to bottom; [we're] very competitive at all levels."

In addition to integrating systems together, adding new technology will also be important to Tyco’s growth and ability to serve businesses large and small, Oliver said.

Alarm.com will continue to be the preferred supplier of smart home technology for Monitronics and its dealers, Alarm.com announced today.

“We are committed to giving our customers and dealers the best technology options available and our renewed partnership with Alarm.com positions us to continue to capitalize on the rapidly growing smart home and home automation services category,” Bruce Mungiguerra, SVP of Operations for Monitronics, said in a prepared statement.

“Alarm.com’s partner services are also key to efficiently supporting and managing accounts across our dealer programs, and help deliver the exceptional customer experience that is so important to our business,” Mungiguerra said in the release.

Steve Trundle, Alarm.com’s president and CEO, said in the statement, “We place great value on our long-term strategic partnership with Monitronics and we are excited to reaffirm our commitment going forward so that we can each provide great services to the leading independent security dealers in North America.”

PSA Security Network, which has been out ahead on the cybersecurity front, has assembled a Cybersecurity Advisory Committee tasked with leading PSA's cyber program "by offering expertise, resources and services to the PSA community."

The "cyber-savvy" group includes people from "a variety of practice areas including physical security manufacturers, integrators, security consultants and engineers, cybersecurity experts and cyber law," Bill Bozeman, president and CEO of PSA Security Network, said in a statement.

Now that it is the New Year—2016—it is also the year of the 2G sunset, with the effective end date for 2G signals being Dec. 31 this year. A lot of people have been talking about it, such as how to prepare for it, how to approach mass radio conversions and when dealers need to start. Lately, I’ve heard that the 2G sunset will play a role in the 2016 acquisition market.

Specifically, I’ve heard that dealers that have not completed, or perhaps haven’t started, their 2G conversions may find it easier to sell their accounts to a company that can and is willing to take on the project.

This week, Doug Smith, president of the commercially focused business Redwire, shared a similar sentiment—that there could be opportunities to buy resi accounts as a result of the 2G sunset.

At Honeywell’s 2015 CONNECT, there was a discussion on how dealers should get started on 2G conversions. A recurrent point was that all alarm companies should have started by now, especially as some areas have already lost 2G signals.

One speaker at CONNECT, Spencer Smith of APS, said that his company hired additional staff—a technician and a coordinator—to focus solely on the conversion.

Video surveillance company Avigilon on Tuesday adopted a "shareholder rights" plan, an anti-takeover measure that's sometimes called a "poison pill." The plan has been accepted by the Toronto Stock Exchange, but it needs to be approved by shareholders within six months. Avigilon plans to present the plan at is 2016 annual meeting.

Avigilon said it "is not aware of any proposed take-over bid at this time."

One can see how Avigilon may be attracting attention from a larger entity looking to get into physical security. Avigilon has well-regarded video and access control technology, including the former VideoIQ portfolio. It owns a lot of video analytics IP, and I hear it has very good relationships with integrators. Plus its stock is down considerably. Yesterday its stock closed at $12.90; Avigilon's 52-week range is $11.20 to $25.62.

Under Avigilon's proposed shareholder rights plan, one "right" will be issued for each Avigilon common share. The rights can only be exercised if an aquirer announces an intention to acquire shares that would take their holding to "at least 20 percent of Avigilon's outstanding share capital." The rights would allow shareholders, "other than the acquirer, to purchase additional shares at a substantial discount." A "permitted take-over bid" would not trigger the rights plan.

Christopher Denniston told Security Systems News that last year’s event was “a very big success, so we’re doing the same thing again this year.”

“We’re working on expanding the Rapid team on both coasts,” Denniston said. The company is looking to have a similar event close to its Corona, Calif., facility, he said, but hasn’t finalized the event yet.

Denniston talked about the company’s goals for this event. “We’re looking to fill over 70 positions immediately, and then once the expansion is completed, that’ll bring that total to over 100,” Denniston said. The company is working on expanding its Syracuse headquarters from 40,000 to 75,000 square-feet this year.

“The 70 openings are primarily newly created positions, but some will fill roles vacated through internal career growth,” he said.

2015 was a good year for the company, Denniston said; Rapid Response “added some significant international business [last] year.”

How much international business did Rapid Response do previously? “We provided monitoring for a few dealers in the Caribbean on a smaller scale, but we’ve expanded that. … Today, we are monitoring for dealers in Bermuda and Cayman.”

Yes, among the highlights of TechSec this year will be a session we've dubbed "Battle of the body parts," and not just because it's a catchy title. We're going to have a little competition at TechSec.

I've been hearing from more and more integrators that biometrics are coming of age. They're more affordable and they're more reliable, you've told me.

So, we decided to take a look at which biometric technique works best and where the promise still exceed the reality.

SecuritySpecifiers' Ray Coulombe will lead the session and he's gathered experts on four biometric technologies—facial recognition, eye scan, fingerprint, and hand geometry—to speak. Those representatives will state their cases. These will not be manufacturer' pitches. Those are not allowed at TechSec and would be booed off the stage. Rather they'll be biometrics experts talking about specific technology fundamentals (rather than their companies or products), advantages and best application areas.

To help figure out who wins the battle we'll have a panel of judges drawn from our "20 under 40" award winners.

Home Security Monitoring Center, a family-owned wholesale central station based in Stowe, Vt., is focusing on virtualization, “Putting more and more information up on the cloud,” according to company president Scott Trowbridge. The company mainly uses the cloud for business efficiency.

Trowbridge said that HSMC has been using the cloud for years, but named it as a priority moving into 2016 and beyond. “It’s not going to be done tomorrow. … Having to commit to something like that is a very big choice. … It’s one of those things that doesn’t make you money, it just … saves time and makes you more efficient.”

The company uses the cloud to store information that is relevant for the “daily running of the business,” according to Trowbridge. Fewer computers means lower power consumption and fewer IT issues, “it makes us more cost-effective to push things into the cloud to some degree.”

The cloud makes the company more flexible, Trowbridge told me, both in terms of getting information and notifications to dealers as well as allowing staff access to information while not in the office.

“We’ve got to be very careful about how we put [information] into the cloud, and making sure that the most critical information—customer’s information—stays local so that it doesn’t get compromised,” he said.

In addition, by leveraging the cloud, workstations in HSMC are able to access a variety of functions from one spot, allowing employees to pick up their work at any location.

Trowbridge says that the company cross-trains its employees, “In order to keep things interesting and fresh, we try to rotate tasks out for our operators to … round-out the education.” These roles range from alarm monitoring to data entry and putting accounts on and off test.